Bruce Lee items to be sold at Hong Kong auction

HONG KONG – Thirteen items belonging to the late kung fu legend Bruce Lee, including a 1966 letter he wrote and a fur-lined coat will go under the hammer in a Hong Kong auction next week, a report said Saturday.

The sale, which could raise up to HK$880,000 ($112,900), is believed to be the largest-scale auction of his memorabilia in the southern Chinese city, where Lee was raised before moving to the United States in his late teens.

Items to be sold from his estate include a letter he wrote 45 years ago to a friend in which the martial arts specialist talked about the television series The Green Hornet, in which he played Kato, a confidant of the superhero.

“The item is meaningful in the sense that it can allow us to understand more about Bruce Lee’s views and what he thought about his work at that time,” Wong Yiu-keung, the Bruce Lee Fan Club chairman told the South China Morning Post.

Other items to be sold at the August 6 auction include a dark-blue fur-lined coat which was made around 1973 for Lee’s film Game of Death, a membership card for his kung fu institute, and a name card of Lee.

The sale is jointly organized by auction houses America’s Kelleher Auctions and Phila China of Hong Kong. Bruce Lee Fan Club and Phila China could not be reached for immediate comment on Saturday.

The Hong Kong government said last month that it has shelved a plan to turn Lee’s old home in the southern Chinese city – which later became a rundown love hotel – into a museum, citing differences with the property owner.

Fans of the icon, who died in 1973 at the age of 32, have long called for museum dedicated to Lee in the city.

Lee – credited with catapulting the martial arts film genre into the mainstream with films including Fists of Fury and the posthumously released Enter the Dragon – died after a severe reaction to medication.